We shall have our own opinions on the nature of these apparitions. But Luther, it is quite certain, believed that Satan himself attacked him in person. Satan, he tells us, came often to him, and said, 'See what you have done. Behold this ancient Church--this mother of saints--polluted and defiled by brutal violence. And it is you--you, a poor ignorant monk, that have set the people on to their unholy work. Are you so much wiser than the saints who approved the things which you have denounced? Popes, bishops, clergy, kings, emperors--are none of these--are not all these together--wiser than Martin Luther the monk?' The devil, he says, caused him great agony by these suggestions. He fell into deep fits of doubt and humiliation and despondency. And wherever these thoughts came from, we can only say that they were very natural thoughts--natural and right. He called them temptations; yet these were temptations which would not have occurred to any but a high-minded man. He had, however, done only what duty had forced him to do. His business was to trust to God, who had begun the work and knew what He meant to make of it. His doubts and misgivings, therefore, he ascribed to Satan, and his enormous imaginative vigour gave body to the voice which was speaking in him. He tells many humorous stories--not always producible--of the means with which he encountered his offensive visitor. 'The devil,' he says, 'is very proud, and what he least likes is to be laughed at.' One night he was disturbed by something rattling in his room; the modern unbeliever will suppose it was a mouse. He got up, lit a candle, searched the apartment through, and could find nothing--the Evil One was indisputably there. 'Oh!' he said, 'it is you, is it?' He returned to bed, and went to sleep. Think as you please about the cause of the noise, but remember that Luther had not the least doubt that he was alone in the room with the actual devil, who, if he could not overcome his soul, could at least twist his neck in a moment--and then think what courage there must have been in a man who could deliberately sleep in such a presence! During his retirement he translated the Bible. The confusion at last became so desperate that he could no longer be spared; and, believing that he was certain to be destroyed, he left Wartburg and returned to Wittenberg. Death was always before him as supremely imminent. He used to say that it would be a great disgrace to the Pope if he died in his bed. He was wanted once at Leipsic. His friends said if he went there Duke George would kill him. 'Duke George!' he said; 'I would go to Leipsic if it rained Duke Georges for nine days!' No such cataclysm of Duke Georges happily took place. The single one there was would have gladly been mischievous if he could; but Luther outlived him--lived for twenty-four years after this, in continued toil, re-shaping the German Church, and giving form to its new doctrine.